In other exciting news, I cleaned our windows. {Homemade Glass Cleaner Recipe + Printable}

Um, what? Cleaning windows is exciting? Why, yes. Yes it is. Especially when I’ve never cleaned them. Ever. Not in any of the spare minutes I’ve had while dwelling in this house for the past two and a half years. I’ve clearly had more important things to do.

But I was relaxing in the living room the other day (like I said, important things happening around here) and noticed just how mortifyingly disgusting the windows were. There’s just something about smeary slimy dust and slimy cat nose residue that is not entirely endearing. “Welcome to our home; here is a cat booger for you to contemplate.”

To fix this problem, I followed the recipe found here for homemade no-streak glass cleaner, plus added a couple drops of blue food coloring to make it more official. Or something. Rick asked me why I didn’t make it pink. He said, “You had a chance to have pink cleaning products and you didn’t take it?” He’s right, of course. I blame my pregnancy brain for this unfortunate oversight.

Pregnancy brain didn’t totally conquer me, though, because I thought to make a printable for the spray bottle so that I know what the heck is in it, and a recipe for the back so I remember how the heck to make it again. And I will be making it again, because it was cheap. This whole bottle cost basically, I don’t know, twelve cents? Basically, I’ll never buy Windex again. (No smart comments predicting that this is because I don’t ever plan to clean the windows again.)

Right-click to save the file for printing!

Right-click to save the file for printing!

Quick print + packaging tape=instant waterproof label.

Also, it works. Cleared away the grime and left no streaks behind. (Ooh, catchy. That could be the slogan for the product.) To prove my point like an infomercial, I’d show you a picture of the cloth after I wiped off the front of one window, but you’d judge me. And never come to my house again. And wonder how two people could possibly get so much dirt to cling to their windows. It’s an art form, probably. So you’ll just have to picture the grimiest, blackest cloth ever, then multiply it by disgustingest squared, and know that’s what came off of our windows.

What household chores do you procrastinate on? Do you have any go-to homemade cleaners that work? Please share the link if you do—I want to phase out some of our other cleaners, too! To be honest, with our snazzy easy-access windows, cleaning windows doesn’t appear to be the worst chore ever, so it’s a mystery as to why I’ve waited so long. I much less prefer tasks like cleaning the shower. Blergh.

Convert a Trunk to a File Box…with the help of Joan Rivers, Dr. Phil, and a pesky cat.

Ready for a project that is fast and simple? Me too. Let’s talk about the trunk that we upgraded to a file box.

This might not seem ground-breaking, but it is. Our former filing system was This. And This is not a joke.

We are nothing if not classy. And organized.

The thrifted $5 metal trunk-turned-file box has been sitting around for so long that I can’t even find an original photo of it. It began its life dingy gold but has been seriously confused by all of the colors it has been under my roof: first gold, then brown, then red for about 5.4 minutes until Rick asked why there was a fire engine in the house, then blue, and now teal, thanks to a couple coats of Rustoleum 2X Lagoon.

It has, furthermore, held a variety of purposes, from Boob Light Graveyard to Cat House.

And now we’ve had the nerve to convert it from your plain average trunk altogether. Dr. Phil will probably be all up in this nurtured identity crisis. Our story will be featured before the parents who buy their kids pot and after the estranged-sister-in-a-cult-that-eats-tree-bark intervention.

Lucky for you, the conversion process was simpler than a cult brainwashing and cost us only $.98 for a square dowel. That’s less than the price of Tums, which will be necessary after ingesting tree bark.

Converting a trunk to a file box: What you’ll need.

• trunk
• one 1/4”x36” wood dowel (maybe more than one depending on the size of your trunk)
• skinny scrap wood
• Gorilla Wood Glue
• hideous and inefficient former storage system (optional)
• husband who can operate a table saw (not optional)

Converting a trunk to a file box: What you’ll do.

• First, the wood needs to be cut to size. I highly recommend doing the dishes in exchange for your husband completing this step for you. This exchange also guarantees that all parties come away with necessary limbs still attached and not hanging in a bloody mass from the table saw, a perk that my husband is smart enough to recognize. That, and he hates doing the dishes and if I lost my fingers he’d have to do the dishes for the rest of our lives. My approach was foolproof.
• Second, use Gorilla Wood Glue to attach the scrap wood to the sides of the trunk. I used the file folder to determine placement.

• The dowels were glued last. My recommendation here is that you let them cure before you go and hang your 89 pounds of mostly unnecessary files on them, causing them to sag prematurely. Nobody likes premature sagging. Just ask Joan Rivers.

Source-ish

• Next, kick your cat out of the trunk for the 18th time.

• Add your folders.

• Console your cat when she learns she is no longer welcome in the trunk.

• The end.

By the way, I am declaring war on cute and coordinated Pinterest photos that tell me my file folders should be chevron or polka-dotted or hand-painted with “You are my sunshine.” I don’t really care what the inside of my file box looks like and neither does my bank statement. My method is Spinterest: spin around in circles long enough and everything looks cute. Or you vomit. Which isn’t usually cute. But it temporarily takes your mind off of your non-cute file folders. Win.

Where do you keep your files? Is anything in your home experiencing an identify crisis? Do you think Joan Rivers’ face would move if someone poked it with some tree bark?

Lead Poisoning: What Every Parent Needs to Know

You all know that my blog is not a tireless dirge of doom and gloom. (I talk about bras too much for that to be the case.) But there is one topic that, while definitely being home improvement-related, does not fit in with the usual form of levity around these parts. Nonetheless, it has hit close to home and I hope the story, while long, will resonate with you, as well.

Lead. More specifically, lead poisoning in children.

It’s one of those things that I heard about occasionally, but didn’t necessarily think much about. I naively believed lead poisoning to be the result of something drastic and neglectful like a child physically ingesting loads of lead paint from old windowsills, something that could surely never happen to me because hello I will not have chippy old windowsills and wouldn’t let my kid chew on them anyway.

Turns out I was wrong. Turns out it’s much easier than that for a child to end up with lead poisoning, especially when you live in an old home that almost definitely contains lead paint. Turns out you can be the most attentive, loving parent and homeowner and still be looking in horror at elevated lead levels, not knowing what you should have done to prevent it and wondering what kind of future your child could have had if you had known sooner.

This is what happened to a friend of mine, who we will call Natalie to protect her privacy. She has a daughter who is almost two (we will call her Abby), and last year at Abby’s one-year check-up she was tested, as children now are in New York, for lead in her blood. Natalie didn’t think anything of it until the results came back with a lead level of 10. According to the New York State Department of Health, this requires action.

Source

Initial feelings of indignation—Natalie had previously shared my beliefs about the causes of lead poisoning—were quickly replaced by confusion. How could this happen? Where is the lead coming from? Next was the horror and regret: what have I done to my child? No mother wants to face that question, and Natalie said she spent many days and nights in tears as she and her husband began the painful process of figuring out what had happened and what needed to be done to get Abby’s levels back into a normal, safe range.

So what had happened? They, like us, live in an old house. They, like us, had done significant renovation that involved tearing out old plaster and lathe and replacing it with drywall. Then they, like us, had a baby.

See why this is hitting close to home?

Plaster and lathe alone does not necessarily contain lead, but you know what can: the layers of old paint on that plaster. In their renovation, Natalie and her husband had worn the necessary HEPA masks, sealed everything off, and had cleaned up adequately—or so they truly believed. But the dust created by that process had not been fully eliminated despite their efforts, and, as they learned when the Department of Health came, it had settled into the ducts of their forced air system and into the carpet fibers of their home. Abby’s crib was situated right over a register. Lead dust was found on this because of the dust that had settled into the ducts, meaning it was blowing around the room whenever the heat was on.

The Department of Health also pointed out a key indicator of lead paint’s presence: this scaly, alligator-like effect on a painted surface, which was around their entryway door frame.

Source

Natalie and her husband hired professionals to clean out the air ducts, had a whole-house water filtration system installed, replaced all of their home’s original windows—the windows themselves had not been painted but the window tracks had, and with lead paint—and all wall-to-wall carpeting was replaced. These are not easy, inexpensive DIY fixes.

As a result of her loving parents’ adamancy to fix this, Abby’s blood lead levels are now down to a 1. The thing with those lead levels, though, is that the damage done from an elevated level is irreversible. Natalie and her husband also have no way of knowing what the levels are in her brain, which gets rid of the lead more slowly than the blood.

Abby is a beautiful, happy, and healthy little girl—but Natalie finds herself wondering what her future could have held that it no longer will because of her exposure to lead. Abby met some of her milestones a little later than expected, and while Natalie does not know exactly what the cause of those delays were and will never know for sure, she wonders if they could have been prevented. More specifically, if the knowledge she has now could have changed anything in Abby’s early life.

She won’t ever know. But what Natalie does know is that knowledge is power, and in this case, it has the power to change the future of someone else’s little girl or boy, which is why she gave me her blessing to share her story.

She wants you to know that all it takes to elevate a child’s lead levels is 30 particles of lead dust. This can fit on your fingertip.

She wants you to know that images like this make her simultaneously sad and angry, recognizing that tell-tale alligator scale created by old lead paint and wondering what she can do to prevent the children in those pictures from coming in contact with this window-turned-decor. Because one little loose flake is all it would take to cause irreversible damage.

She wants you to know that she would have done anything to prevent this from happening to her own child. And she hopes that by sharing her story, she can prevent another mother somewhere from experiencing the same pain and regret with which she now lives.

What you can do in addition to sharing this story with others:

• Before sanding, scraping or disturbing old painted surfaces, test it for lead. You can buy a lead test at the hardware store for less than $10.
• If doing renovation in a home built prior to 1978 (the year lead was banned from paint), use a HEPA certified vacuum and soap and water to clean up areas in which potential lead dust has been created. Do NOT dry sweep or use a regular vacuum, as this will stir up the dust even more.
• Have your ducts professionally cleaned if lead dust has been created in your home. This is the only way to ensure there is no lead dust remaining.
• Consider what you are drinking: if the water pipes are old, they may contain lead. Use a certified water filtration system for your water.
• Walk away from those chippy old things and instead create your own non-toxic distressed finish on pieces.
• Visit here for a list of common lead sources.

Have you had any experience with lead paint? Do you have any wisdom to share? Do you have any questions that my friend can answer for us? She is admittedly more of an expert than she wishes she had to be.

Earring Storage: Birdcages Aren’t Just For Birds

Whoever said birdcages were for birds had never met my earring collection.

Birdcages for birds. What a radical concept. It’s like saying toast is for toasters. I mean, really.

This is not to say I have a lot of earrings; I suppose by some standards (Rick’s) I might, but by others (Kim Kardashian’s) I have a humble, meager collection. The problem was that ever since I got my hair cut back in April, I have been drawn to larger, more dangly earrings that take center stage with hair that shows them off, versus my old standby favorites: small pearls. And these large earrings were getting seriously cramped and messy in my jewelry box that had exactly 4 little cubicles for earrings. So when I spotted this unused birdcage candleholder collecting dust in my craft room (Unused? Collecting dust? What, my crap craft room?) I decided to try hanging some of my earrings on it.

And I liked what I saw.

And in case you were wondering, that is the giant ampersand hanging behind it. It’s been there for, oh, several months. Someday I will show it in full view on my blog.

And in case you were also wondering, I pay no more than $5-$6 for a pair of earrings. My favorite haunts are Target and New York & Company. Just about all of the ones hanging there are from one of those two places, and most cost under $5 on sale/with coupons.

What are your go-to earring stores? How do you display your jewelry? Do you use birdcages in socially acceptable ways?

*Linking this up to Tater Tots & Jello and the DIY Show-Off Project Parade!*

Long-Lost Scissor Reunions (and a Quick Fix for Over-Eating Desk Drawers)

This isn’t one of those cute fixes that is featured in Real Simple or Martha Stewart’s Living. This is one of those ugly but totally useful fixes that will be featured nowhere except this blog and the annals of Function Over Form.*

*No such publication exists.

The problem: a crazed desk drawer that has existed since, well, the beginning of time. You all know the kind. The kind that devours pens and paper clips and reeks of belched rubber bands. The kind that greedily slurps up your scissors, forcing you to cut out coupons with fingernail clippers. The kind that you open and then hastily close because you can’t find anything in there anyway so what’s the point, and besides, it may spontaneously combust at any moment and you aren’t wearing sunscreen.

But since I’ve had the summer off and have mainly just made movie posters of my cats, I decided that it was time to stop avoiding the binging junk drawer and tackle it head on, Jillian Michaels style. So I flexed my muscles and glared it at and told it it was a loser, and then got down to business. And as I was getting down to business, I found a pair of scissors.

Rejoice! I embraced it tearfully.

And then I wiped my eyes and continued digging, and found Scissor’s brother.

And then Scissor’s entire extended family including Great-Uncle Hector who suffers from scoliosis.

And it turns out that either scissors are capable of reproduction or I have unwittingly been banishing the Scissor Family to this sad excuse of a drawer and it is my own fault that they can never be found.

So I did what any responsible scissor owner would do: I showed them Intimacy: The Movie I got a cereal box and fruit snacks box out of the recycling bin, cut off the fronts, taped up the sides, and made perfectly sized, drawer-friendly homes for the Scissors and their delinquent friends Tape and Pens and Pencils.

And they all lived happily ever after.

The end.

See, I told you Real Simple wouldn’t go for it. Even though this fix was real simple.

Bahaha. Ha. Ha.

Does your house eat scissors? Have you found any uses for cereal boxes?

***Linking this up to Honey We’re Home!***

Operation Take the “Fur” Out of “Furniture”

Let’s face it: when you are a cat or dog owner and it is warm outside, every surface that those animals sit on and touch collects gobs and gobs of fur. Your cat sidles along your leg and you are now wearing a whole new cat on your pants. You can’t find your bed because it is buried in fur. You lay down on the couch and arise looking like this:

…which would not be a bad thing if we lived on Endor and Wookiees ruled the land and there was racism against humans, or if you were in a hairy chest contest.*

*I have never entered a hairy chest contest.

We have a couple chairs in particular that have succumbed to the evil that is constant cat fur. I was not pleased with the toll it was taking on this chair in our bedroom.

You see, our cats use that chair more often than we do. And we don’t use it that often because the cats are using it. (It’s a vicious cycle.)

We left a blanket on it for a while, but it looked sort of frumpy and the fur destroyed the blanket. It did make for some pretty cozy sleeping…if it’s cozy to sleep upside down with your arms in the air.

Drastic times call for drastic measures, so I did something drastic: I went to Joann’s. And I bought a yard of some blue suede-ish velour-ish (suelour?) fabric on the clearance shelf for $2/yard. And I brought that home and cut it into two pieces slightly smaller than the seat of our abused chair, then hemmed them with iron-on tape.

And now the fur is collected by a cheap, washable and, if necessary, replaceable pad of sorts.

I can also vacuum the protective pads off eight times a day without worrying about wearing away the fabric, an opportunity I have naturally taken full advantage of. See?

In an ideal world, the fabric would be the same as the chair upholstery. But in an ideal world, fur would not fall off and fabric would be free. So there’s that.

The next furniture to rescue is Zoe’s favorite first-story bed: one of our living room chairs.

These types of bizarre sleeping positions are totally normal around here. You should see the way Rick sleeps. Actually, no you shouldn’t. That would be weird. (Hi Rick.)

Does your furniture get suffocated by pet fur? Who wants to come vacuum off our chair pad eight times a day? I will feed you occasionally.

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P.S. I announced the two giveaway winners and a discount offer good for 15% off at Pretty Prints (now through Sunday!) over here. Go check it out!

P.P.S. There are now 16 bloggers participating in the Random Acts of Craftiness challenge, which I shared yesterday! Want to make it 17? Go here for details!

P.P.P.S. (I feel like I’m in 4th grade writing a note) Apologies for the identity crisis that my blog keeps undergoing. I think I’ve finally settled on a look I can live with.

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Wanted: Stainless Steel Cleaning Advice

Here’s what I am wondering today: am I the only human on the planet who does not understand the popularity of stainless steel appliances? Don’t get me wrong. I think they look sleek, modern, shiny…all those trendy things.

However.

Keeping our stainless steel refrigerator and microwave non-grimy has recently become a source of mild frustration for me. I’ve tried multiple cleaning products to no avail: I still end up with streaky appliances that are covered in fingerprints and smudges and whoknowswhatelse. And when the sun hits them? Ewwww. It’s like my fridge is laughing at me and my desire for it to not look like a herd of popsicle-wielding preschoolers just had a play date on it.

I’ve always wanted to use the Chiller font in a blog post.

On the bright side, if anyone ever breaks into our house to steal items from our fridge (which is highly probable considering the delicacies we’ve been known to stash in there, as discussed here), we’ll have their fingerprints preserved on our fridge indefinitely, because unless they know something I don’t, there’s no quick and easy way to remove them.

I’ve googled for some help, but a summary of my findings includes:

-products that don’t exist anymore

-products that cost more than our mortgage

-products that need to be applied bi-hourly

-products that requires 6 days of rigorous polishing after applying

-homemade brews that involve things like three parts wild passion fruit root extract and five parts Jamaican Red Dwarf banana tree oil

-the following definition on Wikipedia: Stainless steel does not corrode, rust or stain with water as ordinary steel does, but despite the name, it is not fully stain-proof.

So I’m counting on you, my fabulous blog readers, to help me out! If you have stainless steel anything, what do you use to clean it? What has worked? What hasn’t? Spill all the juicy details. My appliances thank you in advance, as does the Committee for the Preservation of Jamaican Red Dwarf Banana Trees.

TCIH: "A great place for storage!"

I'm baaaack with another edition of True Confessions of an Imperfect Homeowner, where I remind myself that it's OK to not be Martha Stewart. Rick and I definitely don't know what we're doing as we play house, but we're having fun learning. If you're just recently joining in, the first post was about how cat hair is taking over our house and the second was about our moldy refrigerator leftovers.

This time, the idea for a topic began with me not being able to find a pair of scissors. Now, I own, I think, 8 pairs of scissors. Eight. I am fairly certain that a scissor thief lives in this house, though, because I can rarely find a pair of them, and usually when I do, it's these weird bent ones that came with the pack of normal, healthy scissors. So our thief is not only sneaky, but also smart. He/she knows that the bent ones are just plain too mysterious to be useful.

(What are these for, anyway? Torture?)

So in my quest to find a non-deformed pair of scissors, I opened our storage ottoman. Remember that? The one we built ourselves so that we'd have A Great Place to Put Stuff and it would be Such a Happy Thing?

Well. We have taken that concept of "putting stuff" very, very seriously. I opened it up, and here's what I found in one half of it:

 
See what happens when you abuse great storage options? Sunshiney skies fade. Flowers keel over. Sweetly singing birds morph into repulsive HorseMen lounging about in swanky pleather club chairs. It's like what would have happened if the clown from It had showed up to be Cinderella's fairy godmother. 

From my cursory view of the surface, no scissors were in sight. I was tempted to close the lid and walk away, but we've been discussing how we should be using it to store items other than our garbage things we shove in there when company is coming over, so out it all came.  And let me tell you, I found some great stuff. Some stuff that proves we were definitely abusing the "great storage" feature of our great storage ottoman.

 It was like a treasure hunt for lame people.

I ended up throwing a bunch of stuff away and added a bunch to the "future yard sale" pile. Then, I filled the ottoman with birds and sunshine our game collection, a few magazines that made the cut, my vat of paint chips, and Rick's piano books (which were formerly housed in a large broken plastic drawer placed on the floor a la freshman year dorm decor). All of these items are generally used in or near the living room, anyway. Unlike the map of New Jersey, except that one time we took everything out of the ottoman and pretended it was a car while singing "The Wheels on the Bus."  But I wasn't going to mention that.

Basically, I've realized that "storage" in this case was a euphemism for "a place to stash the junk that you don't feel like putting in its proper location or thinking about." However, our ottoman has looked like the above picture for 3 weeks and looks the same, and we've even had company over a few times. I think it helps that there are items designated to be in there, because then we don't just toss in every loose item and call it a day.

I still haven't found my entire collection of scissors, however. Of course, this may be because our ottoman is obviously not the only "stuff graveyard" in our house. That closet in the hall, those drawers in the hutch...for all I know, the Horse Man has a wife and eight kids with matching velvet robes. (Optimum conception for creepy horseman babies is, after all, amid a massive pile of junk. You wish you could have left this post without that tidbit, am I right?)

Summary of points:  
1) Try to use giant storage graveyards ottomans to store specific large items.
2) Make sure those specific large items are generally used in the same vicinity of the storage graveyard ottoman.
3) Try to refrain from shoving all manner of garbage in there just to hide it from company.
4) Don't adopt a tiny Horse Man because you feel sorry for him. He will abuse your sympathy and kindness.


So what is YOUR "great storage spot" where household items go to die? Any tips for staying organized? Go ahead. Confess. You know you want to. :)

P.S. Do you have an imperfection you'd like to confess? Email me with your fun ideas: I'd love to feature some of your stories!